Queen Mary and Westfield College London University PhD Thesis ...

exigent need to bolster the meagre funds of the hospitals by ensuring hospital property was
occupied and earning rent, encouraged the Governors (especially in the seventeenth century) to
grant long term leases, with minimal (practical) restrictions upon the nature of improvements
and extensions392 . Indeed, tenants were actively encouraged, or obligated by bond, to expand
their leaseholds and thus increase their maketable value for the hospitals. As a consequence of
this policy and tenants' industry, and of Bethlem's own expansion in the 1640s, the Bishopsgate
house was soon hemmed-in and encroached upon by neighbouring properties. Instructions to
tenants, like Nicholas Beard, not to erect any new building nearer than 24 feet from the hospital
house, were too little and too late 393 . The resiting of the hospital at Moorfields was decided
upon partly because there was little space left at Bishopsgate with which to extend the old
building394.
There were endemic hazards to health at the Bishopsgate site over which the Governors
could have only limited control. Old Bethlem was built directly over a common sewer, which
served the inhabitants of both the hospital and its precinct. In simply making a living for
themselves in the vicinity of Bethlem, tenants were prone to blocking, obstructing and polluting
this sewer and the hospital's entrances (whose use they also shared). The sewer was blocked
recurrently by residents' 'filth' in the seventeenth century, and patients' suffered from drawn
out wrangles between the Governors, residents and the City, over responsibility for its various
sections395 . While visiting governors strove assiduously to preserve the hospital grounds from
392 In 1638, Parliament ruled 'that noe leases of the land of and belonging to Bethiem' should be granted for
more than '21 yeares', yet this restriction was by no means rigidly adhered to. Typically, in 1681, when the
Bethlem Committee were prepared to renew the lease of William Phillips for a term of another 31 years, the
Court instructed them to 'consider whether granting such long term leases be not ptreldudidal to the hospitall',
but the Committee proceeded to grant the lease at the term originally proposed, on Phillips agreeing to pay a
high fine of £200 and to spend £220 more in extending the property over the next 5 years; ,b1J, 2 April 1638, 31
Aug. & 7 Oct. 1681, fol, 173, 252 & 260-61. Most leases were granted by the Governors on a similar long-term
basis, in this period, although 21 yes was nearer the average. Tenants could, of course, be prosecuted by law
for conducting unauthorised building or alterations upon their landlords' property.
Ibid, 28 Aug. 1672, fol. 436.
See ,bid, 16 May 1674, fol. 642, where the Governor. are deciding to rebuild the hospital 'more large and in
a more convenient place'; & Strype's version of Stow's Sarvep, vol. i, 192; 'This Hospital stood in an obscure and
close Place, near unto many common Sewers; and was also too little to receive...the great Number of distracted
Persons'.
The method, adopted by the Governors for cleansing this sewer were somewhat makeshift and inefficient.
By 1663, they were paying a 'Raker' quarterly 'to provide Rakes Shovell. and Brooms.' for this purpose. See
e.g. Ilid, 4 March 1636, 21 July, 21 Aug., 4 & 31 Oct., 7 & 21 Nov. 1645, 17 April 1646, 8 Jan. 1651, 24 May
1654, 16 May & 31 Oct. 1655, 4 Nov. 1663, fols 82, 205, 212, 217, 222, 226-7, 259, 477, 658, 702, 722, 76.
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